


Seek You Out (Just to Find Myself)

by Captaindick



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captaindick/pseuds/Captaindick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Peter didn’t wake up from a coma and didn’t kill Laura, where Sheriff Stilinski got shot and Stiles was left all alone at seventeen, fate still brings him and Derek together.</p>
<p>Please don’t hate me for killing off the Sheriff. I don’t know what came over me when I did it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seek You Out (Just to Find Myself)

**Author's Note:**

> there'll be a mild description of a panic attack in this chapter. if there are any tags you think i need to add - please tell me. also the smut won't be featured for a while. a long while. just thought I'd warn you.

Stiles wakes up to the sounds of a hushed conversation. A woman and a man. The boy sneaks a peak and is proved right in his speculations: they’re not in the same room with him. At least this gives him some kind of sense of security. Not that he feels all that dandy after getting abducted. Everything was going great, well, was going as good as it could go for a homeless orphan in a big city, but all the good ended today. With the monster of a man knocking him out and dragging him to… this place.

“You know he smells like home, Laura! You can feel it too, I know! Not like the town, but like-” the man’s voice goes quiet and Stiles swears he was sneaky and silent and even the mattress didn’t squeak. But the next thing he knows, there’s a stunningly beautiful woman with dark hair walking into the small room, the creepy dude from earlier following her but stopping in the doorframe, successfully blocking Sties’ way out. If he was stupid enough to bolt that is. He knows he’s not at an advantage here and even if the woman is all kinds of gorgeous she has this aura about her, for lack of a better word, like she’d be able to snap Stiles’ neck in two if he even tried something. So he just tries to crawl as far from them on the bed as he can without looking like prey and tries to look like he knows what he’s doing instead of being terrified, captured by two strangers. Then, of course, his mouth betrayes him.

“Who are you? What do you want? I’ve got friends that will start looking for me! I said I’d give you back your money! There’ wasn’t much anyway! Where’s my bag?!” Yeah, there was also the issue of Stiles stealing the man’s wallet. Not his best moment but he was starving and he wasn’t looking forward to fainting from the lack of food and sometimes he… resorted to stealing. He became pretty good at it and also in the art of escaping if he got caught. Which happened. With Derek (he knows the name from his driver’s license). Once Derek had his wrist in an iron grip Stiles started screaming about Derek giving him the bad touch and the man was so shocked that he let go. He didn’t have a lot of cash on him it appeared. But it was more than enough for Stiles and his homeless ass. The boy was planning on leaving the wallet with all the cards in it at the nearest police station but, by some horrible kind of coincidence, the man he stole from found him before he got to do that. He found Stiles at the construction site he was using as temporary shelter and knocked him out the second the boy started shouting for help. And now Stiles was laying in a stranger’s bed, probably facing two serial killers planning how exactly to dismember him.

The woman, Laura, laughs at his bewildered expression. Stiles doesn’t see what’s so funny about it or his questions but he doesn’t claim to understand serial killers.

“I’m Laura. And this is Derek.” Stiles forces himself not to roll his eyes to this explanation. “And I wanted to give you some hot homemade food first. There’re pancakes and cocoa.”

Stiles’ stomach, the traitor, growls loudly at that which makes the woman smile even wider. Stiles would probably spend more time thinking about how beautiful she and the man with her looked, if they didn’t knock him out and drag him to god knows where.

“How do I know you aren’t planning on drugging me and eating me or… like, making me your sex slave or something?”

“First of all,” and it’s Mr Muscles speaking. For the first time since he came in after the woman. “Because you reek.” Stiles is left to gape at the man’s retreating back, left with Laura, who’s unsuccessfully trying to hold back laughter.

Stiles scoots away when Laura sits beside him and she doesn’t attempt any more advances. She pulls a strand of hair behind an ear and gives Stiles a small smile.

“Derek just acts all tough and grumpy. He’s actually adorable. He carried you all the way here and it’s his bed you’re using. He got your bag too.” The woman gestures to the head of the bed and Stiles spares a glance over it to see his dirty bag, stuffed with his things. He sighs in relief.

“Still sounds creepy if you ask me.” Stiles feels like he should be more scared but he isn’t. He thinks it’s because beautiful people are easier to trust because of their looks. Still, dying doesn’t sound fun no matter who is doing the killing.

The brunette fiddles with her hair and gets more comfortable on the bed like abducting people is a usual occurrence and Stiles not trusting her is the weirdest thing in the world. Stiles almost starts to feel self-conscious and wonders if the world has really changed that much since the last time he had access to the internet.

“The shower is ready and your spare clothes are there with the towel. You should hurry before the food gets cold. It’s not often that I cook.” And yeah. Stiles needs to get out of here. It’s like the woman doesn’t even understand what’s going on and how weird it is. How crazy she sounds right now offering all this to a total stranger. Of course, Stiles doesn’t look like a threat but behaving like that – she’s obviously not right in the head.

“I should get going. My parents are worried about me. I just needed money for the ticket back home to Illinois. We had this huge fight and I couldn’t really ask them for money because I felt guilty so I tried stealing but, man, everyone has cards these days and doesn’t carry a lot of cash around-”

“Stop while you’re at it, kid. Sounds convincing. If I didn’t know that every word of it was a lie. What’s your name?”

“Scott.” It’s the first thing that comes to mind and Stiles watches her squint at him, like she knows he just told a lie, but this time she doesn’t call him out on it.

“Alright, Scott. We have a few options here: we can call Sheriff Stilinski in Beacon-”

“No you can’t.” It’s stupid but it hurts hearing her say that name. When really it doesn’t mean anything any more.

“You really think-” she starts but Stiles talks over her.

“You can call Sheriff Randel. But I’d really rather ask you not to? I don’t know _how_ you know-”

“We’re from there. Laura and Derek Hale. The sole survivors of the Hale fire?”

Stiles curses loudly. He wasn’t close to the Hales but everybody knows about the fire. It took eleven people, leaving two kids and their comatose uncle. “How do you know Dad became Sheriff? He was a deputy back-” Stiles curses again. His mouth manages to betray him once again but he’s been out of Adderall for way too long and it’s a wonder how he even functioned enough to be able to hitchhike all the way to NY and survive so far. Well, that’s over now. But Laura doesn’t look like she’s going to actually call the cops on him now that she knows who he is.

“What happened, Scott?” She touches a hand to his thigh and Stiles knows he should be more scared now but he isn’t, for some reason. And he feels like the months-long tiredness saturated (month long feeling of tiredness settled) in his bones is being sucked away, making the words flow.

Stiles has no idea why he’s telling her this but he was so scared, so alone… for way too long. So he starts at the beginning: telling her his name wasn’t Scott, talking about his Mother dying when he was twelve, his Dad’s drinking and how seeing him passed out on the couch was a thousand times better than hearing him cry himself to sleep every night, muffling sobs so that Stiles wouldn’t hear, but of course, of course he knew and heard. He tells Laura, as her arms wrap around him and he lets the tears out, sobbs making him shake uncontrollably, about his Father getting shot at something as ordinary and stupid as a mugging at a gas station, about how his best friend’s Mother wanted to fight for custody but she barely made enough to support Scott and their house was falling apart, literally. Of course, there were the deputies he grew up with but he couldn’t even look at them without thinking of his Dad. He talked about no relatives showing up to take him after his Father’s death and the probability of him going to some people he didn’t even know, or an orphanage. Until he turned eighteen. And Stiles couldn’t do that, he needed to get out, he had to escape, so he ran. He told Laura about how he packed overnight and left without saying goodbye…

“And it worked just fine for me until your gorilla of a brother beat me up and dragged me here.” Stiles and Laura aren’t touching now, the boy distancing himself to the end of his story. “So…” his voice is unsure and weak from the crying. He can’t believe he let himself cry in front of a complete stranger. Who still could appear to be a serial killer, Stiles reminded himself. “Are you going to report me now?”

“Well first of all you still need to take a shower because that thing about you reeking? Totally true. I stink now too so I’ll take a shower in the other bathroom. Then I’ll reheat the food and we can talk some more about what exactly are our options here while you eat.”

Stiles squints at her suspiciously and she ruffles his hair affectionately, shoving him off the bed and pushing him all the way to the bathroom.

A hot shower feels heavenly and Stiles moans under the hot spray, taking some time just to stand there, soaking. He’s still not entirely sure the good Samaritans aren’t going to show up from behind the shower curtain with a knife but if that’s the way he goes, he’ll just make the best of it and use their body wash and hair products while he’s at it.

Stiles’ hair is grown out, a stark weird contrast to the buzzcut he used to wear but the longer hair make him look less like a kid, less like he’s out of place and ran away from home. Stiles takes his time lathering his hair and body with soap, washing down the grease and week-long stench of sweat and the street.

He doesn’t want to get out because then it’ll mean this’ll be over. The siblings will call the local police, if they still haven’t while he was showering, and then Stiles will have to go to a foster home. At least he’ll spend a few months less there than he was originally meant to, there was that. All the good feelings from being able to use hot water, and not in a public restroom, trying to sneak in while no one was using it to use an old less-stinky shirt as a washcloth and bolt; dissipated. He used the fuzzy soft towel left there for him and put on the clean oversized clothes that probably belonged to Derek Hale, and trying to ignore the crushing feelings, stepped out of the shower, back into the room he woke up in, and out into the flat, stomach grumbling, following the smell of pancakes.

“Did you use up all the body wash there was?” Are the words he’s greeted with as Derek makes a face and covers his nose like now Stiles smells even worse than before, which, rude. Stiles tells him as much.

“And I thought it was yours. If you don’t like the smell why would you even use it?” Laura sets a plate full of pancakes on the table and Stiles takes it as his queue to sit and dig in, before the woman even has a chance to offer him the berries and syrup.

“I thought I liked it. Now I won’t be able to think of it without wanting to gag.”

Stiles would answer, seriously, he’s the king of childish retorts, but his mouth is occupied with the heavenly pancakes and Laura’s handing him the cocoa, so he can’t be blamed for only pulling a face in response. Flipping Derek off was an option but he was still scared of him so he decided against it.

“Derek. Let Stiles eat in peace. The poor thing is starving.” Derek glares, but doesn’t say a word. That’s when the phone rings. Stiles’ first instinct is to bolt. Get to his feet and run, because of course it has to be the police, because Laura’s already contacted them and they’re at the doors, waiting to drag him to the station. Laura seems to sense his panic though and pats him reassuringly on the shoulder, mouthing “it’s about our uncle,” when she answers the phone. The dark haired woman walks out of the kitchen, further into the flat and her brother tenses, as if staying in one room with Stiles is such a hardship. Well, it probably is.

Stiles immediately feels stupid for thinking it was the police. Why would they even call Laura on the phone if they were here. They’d use the door and even if Stiles tried to run and was successful – how long would it be until he was caught again? Without his things and the police knowing his hiding place thanks to Derek. And he wouldn’t leave without the photo of his Dad, Mom and him, still little, from the time when no one suspected how horrible things would become.

“Dude, -”

Derek’s “Shut up.” Is urgent and he doesn’t even spare a glance at Stiles as he’s dismissing him.

“Hey, -” the boy tries again but is met with a death glare this time and just grumbles into his cup next time. It seems so weird how the two siblings seem to be so different from each other personality-wise. In the looks department they’re pretty much the same, you can instantly tell they’re related. But while the sister is outgoing and compassionate, actually hugging Stiles regardless of his stink and calming him down; the brother is… kind of a dick.

Stiles’ train of thought is interrupted by Laura, walking back into the kitchen. Derek is on his feet in an instant.

“You-”

“No.” She shakes her head and Stiles feels like he’s missing out on something here. Like there’s this chunk of conversation he somehow missed. “I can’t leave right now so I need you to do it.”

Stiles shifts his eyes back to Derek, who’s looking weirdly vulnerable and uncertain.

“Derek.” Laura’s voice is tender but Stiles has a feeling that disobeying her wouldn’t end well. Her brother seems to think the same because he gets up and heads out, giving his sister a hug and telling her he’d be back as soon as possible. She just smiles bitterly and then he leaves. Just like that. Stiles really feels like he’s out of the loop here.

“What-”

“It’s nothing. Nothing you need to worry about.” The woman looks sad for one more lingering second but then it’s like Stiles blinked and the sadness wasn’t ever there, Laura smiling brightly at him. “How about a second serving?”

***

They don’t talk about Stiles’ situation, not really. Laura is tense all through the day and Stiles lets her be, trying to think of what to do but the warmth and comfort he didn’t have for months making him lazy and slow, unable to think straight and not really wanting to leave.

They eat, Stiles catches up on some important news Laura thinks to share with him about politics, they watch movies. Stiles almost cries again when he sees the Hales’ dvd collection and picks every superhero movie he missed while on the run. When he falls asleep on “Nightwing” for the third time she ushers him towards Derek’s bedroom and makes him lay down under the covers. He’s out as soon as his head touches the pillow.

***

Stiles wakes up from noises. Sleeping on the street has made him very attentive to the noises around him so the smallest sound can wake him up. At first he doesn’t understand where he is but then he remembers, the realization not doing anything, really. Which was weird, feeling impassive about the whole thing.

The electronic watch on the bedside says it’s early morning, almost 5 am. Almost 24 hours since Derek Hale found him and brought him to his and his sister’s apartment. Stiles tries to figure out what the sounds outside are but wishes he didn’t as soon as he does. It’s a man, Derek, crying, almost howling, and Laura’s voice shushing him and trying to make him stop even though Stiles is sure he can hear the tears in her voice too. The voices and the sobbs become quieter, blocked by the door to another room, Laura’s probably. But now that he heard what’s going on, Stiles can’t seem to stop hearing it; hearing Derek crying like something horrible’s happened, like he feels like dying, and Laura’s supportive voice breaking with her own crying.

Stiles isn’t even sure if he’s making the sounds up in his head, or if Derek kept crying for hours, for hours that Stiles was lying stiff in bed, clutching at the covers and trying to remember how to breathe, trying to not think about his father and having panic attacks listening to him cry himself to sleep. Stiles isn’t sure if he passes out from lack of oxygen or just falls asleep paralyzed and shivering, but there’s darkness before his eyes and he welcomes it.

**Author's Note:**

> I am ignoring the Teen Wolf timeline because it doesn’t make sense and I’m making a bit up as you can see. Stiles’ father is dead from the start (believe me I hate myself for this more than you do). Peter didn’t wake up when he did in the show. I think that’s it: the major things I changed.
> 
> I have a rough draft of this thing and it’s going to be rather big. The problem is: I won’t be able to update in a while. Writing this took months. Adding bits here and there, sometimes just a sentence a day. But I am planning on finishing it. So if you read this – I am sorry about making you wait for the next part. And thank you for reading!!


End file.
